The first step is to wrap my brain around 900,000 gallons of water. Exactly how much is that?
My Internet search reveals it is about as much as 1 1/2 Olympic-sized pools or 67 typical backyard pools hold.
It is also how much Denver Water says Kelley Brooks has used at her 1,800-square- foot home at East 23rd Avenue and York Street over the past two months.
It’s a neat trick, she says, considering she lives alone and spent the previous two months vacationing in Texas.
She called me Wednesday night, alternating between hysterics and laughter.
She had opened her latest water bill. In the little square at the bottom, letters in an orange block informed her she was now PAST DUE the grand sum of $7,025.08.
“I nearly stroked out,” Brooks said, still holding the monstrous bill while seated in her kitchen. “I thought I was having a heart attack.”
She is on the telephone to Denver Water when she hands me her last three bills.
The July bill was for a comparatively reasonable $151, based on her usage of 46,000 gallons, up from 23,000 a year earlier. The August bill is when things went haywire. It said she consumed 606,000 gallons and was to pay $4,711.91. The September bill shows she apparently scaled back her usage to 292,000 gallons, which cost another $2,307.83. Kick in sewer and other charges, and it raised the total now due to the $7,025.08.
Denver Water informs her that technicians had been out to her home twice, but the lid to the water main was sealed in concrete.
Yes, Brooks says, she had had concrete work done in front of her house. The grass had been walked to death by people using the bus stop there.
The technician said Brooks needed to get that lid off before anything could be done.
Still in a panic over the $7,000 tab, Brooks grabs every wrench she can find, and she and I try to remove the nut holding down the lid. It will not budge.
“I thought I was doing something nice for the city when I had this put in last June,” she says dejectedly, kicking at the new concrete.
I called Stacy Chesney, a Denver Water spokeswoman.
She acknowledged that a $7,000 water bill for such a small home is unusual. “It is amazing how a homeowner will have a leak and not even know it,” she said.
A leak? Wouldn’t, I asked, close to 900,000 gallons of leaked water reveal itself somewhere?
“We’ll just have to wait and see what’s going on once a technician gets out there,” Chesney said.
A computer program at Denver Water takes notes of abnormal usage, and it had spit out Brooks’ address. Technicians had gone out in July and August, found no one home and the lid to the meter sealed.
Another technician was scheduled to come out this afternoon, Chesney said.
By late Thursday, Brooks got her concrete guy to chip out the lid. A Denver Water supervisor came to the house to take a look.
“He guessed it was a leak, said there was a house up the street that had one in the toilet,” Brooks said. “I asked him how much it had leaked. He said 4,000 gallons that month. I laughed and told him my house by comparison should be sailing away about now.”
So she waits, and worries.
“If this has taught me anything,” Brooks said, laughing again, “it is to pay a little more attention to my mail.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
